Although Jerry Tarkanian spent much of his career fighting the NCAA, the former UNLV coach takes no joy in the recent legal and public relations struggles of collegiate sports' governing body. In fact, at 82 and after two strokes, the newly elected Hall of Fame coach doesn't even follow the news of game-changing lawsuits and botched investigations.

"It's a little too late for him," says his son, Danny Tarkanian. "He probably doesn't understand the magnitude of what's come out the past two or three years with the NCAA. And even if he did, it didn't do him any good.

"Things that my dad warned about in the past are now coming true. I think now people are realizing my dad was right at the time."

A handful of highly publicized legal challenges from antitrust to defamation has created a perception that the NCAA has not faced a more perilous time. News media criticism has followed, but so has a sense "that things are worse than they've ever been," says Jo Potuto, a Nebraska law professor and former member of the committee on infractions.

This is despite the NCAA's assertion that its volume of legal cases is no higher than normal for an organization its size and no higher than it has been in recent years.

But in the years since 1977, when Tarkanian first took the NCAA to court for lack of due process in its enforcement proceedings and more than 20 years later collecting $2.5 million in a settlement of another case, suing the NCAA has become more common than it once was. Experts in sports law and lawyers involved in pending cases agree that the culture is different now.

Sonny Vaccaro, a longtime shoe marketing executive, remembers coaches living in fear of NCAA investigators. They were not always aware of charges against them, and Tarkanian's case showed the process — which has since changed — was largely stacked in the NCAA's favor.

"One, it's very hard to win. And two, you don't have the resources to fight an organization like the NCAA," Danny Tarkanian says. "I think (Tarkanian's civil suit) opened the door to say, 'Hey, you can actually beat the NCAA if you fight them long enough.'"

Among its 15 pending lawsuits, the NCAA faces a lawsuit filed on behalf of a group of former college athletes, including UCLA star Ed O'Bannon, challenging whether the association and member schools have the right to profit for use of players' name and likeness into perpetuity without compensating them. A federal judge in California is scheduled to conduct a hearing to determine whether the case can be certified as a class-action suit in June.

Among former coaches suing the NCAA is Todd McNair, a Southern California assistant football coach who has alleged defamation in an investigation that resulted in a major infractions case against the school.

A nine-year-old suit filed by former University of Buffalo men's basketball coach Tim Cohane could call into question whether the NCAA can ever be considered a state actor.

"Let's be honest, a rising tide raises all boats," says David Ridpath, assistant professor of sport administration at Ohio University. "People are getting more brave, and you see what's going on with McNair at USC. It empowers people."

Asked about the association's pending litigation in a news conference during the Final Four this month, NCAA President Mark Emmert said, "If you're not getting sued today, you're not doing anything."

DEFENSE MODE

Since joining the NCAA in March 2011, Donald Remy has looked at the volume of cases handled in recent years by the NCAA and determined its current slate is no more or less than it faced annually in the past decade. Remy, the association's general counsel and vice president for legal affairs, says the NCAA's 15 cases include three brought by the association and three in which it is the defendant dating to 2004. Remy says four of the 12 cases are on appeal from decisions granted in the association's favor.

"For an organization this size, the litigation it faces, I think it's consistent with other organizations this size and that has this visibility," he tells USA TODAY Sports.

That has meant spending to defend the association. According to the NCAA's federal tax returns, the association spent a total of $69.1 million from its 2002 fiscal year to 2011. The NCAA has not yet filed its tax returns for its 2012 fiscal year, and it declined to provide a figure for its legal expenses for the year in advance of its filing, which is not required until July.

Among the pending lawsuits, none looms larger than the O'Bannon case. Filed in 2009, the suit alleges that the NCAA, video-game maker Electronic Arts and Collegiate Licensing Co. — the leading collegiate trademark and licensing firm — violated antitrust laws.

According to the plaintiffs' suit, the defendants conspired to set at zero the compensation football and men's basketball players could receive for use of their names, likenesses and images while they are in school. The plaintiffs allege a form the athletes signed relinquishes the use of their names, likeness and images in rebroadcasts of games, TV contracts and in video-game and apparel sales.

In June, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken is scheduled to conduct a hearing on the plantiff's bid for class-action certification. If granted, the class-action status could potentially bring thousands of former and current football and men's basketball players into the case and put billions of dollars in damages at stake.

"The O'Bannon case seems to be calling into question the structure that has been developed over the last 50 years," says Richard Southall, director of the College Sport Research Institute at the University of North Carolina. "The fundamental organizational question or institutional question that the O'Bannon case is raising is, 'Is that a fair and equitable system?'"

With revenues increasing each year for the organization, that's a more pertinent question, says attorney Stephen Morrissey,

The Seattle-based lawyer was one of the plaintiffs' attorneys in White v. NCAA, a 2006 anti-trust lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in California. The plaintiffs challenged restrictions on athletic scholarships being limited to room, board, books, tuition and fees. The NCAA acknowledged those scholarships fall about $2,500 short of the cost of attendance.

A settlement was reached in 2008 requiring the NCAA to create a $10 million fund for former football and basketball players to cover future educational expenses as well as make $218 million available over six years to provide additional benefits to current athletes.

Revenues have grown since then. The NCAA's audited financial statements for the 2011 fiscal year report nearly $846 million in revenues, an amount made up largely by its contract with CBS and Turner Broadcasting for the men's basketball tournament.

"The CBS contract seemed to spark a lot of issues and sort of highlighted the amount of money that's really at issue, what people see as hypocrisies and inequities between the NCAA and schools and kids," says Morrissey.

"It's difficult to challenge them. They still fight every lawsuit very hard, and they do have a lot of discretion with how they run things."

Todd McNair, left, is alleging defamation by the NCAA in an investigation that resulted in a major infractions case against Southern Cal.(Photo: Chris Carlson, AP)

GETTING COURTS INVOLVED

The NCAA's status as a private organization gives it wide latitude to create and administer its own rules, but several pending lawsuits allege its failure to do so resulted in harm to other parties. To varying degrees, that includes cases filed by McNair, Cohane and others.

"Generally speaking, courts won't intervene in the affairs of a voluntary association, like the NCAA, unless it refuses to follow its own rules or violates established statutory law," says a person who has extensive experience with the NCAA. "Lawsuits with no merit get dismissed pretty quickly. So when you see a number of high-profile suits against the NCAA, it confirms the belief of many people in the industry that the NCAA won't follow its own rules and feels it's above the law."

The person asked not to be identified out of fear the NCAA might retaliate if the person's identity were revealed.

McNair filed a defamation lawsuit in 2011 after a major infractions case for which he received a one-year show-cause penalty that he alleges has effectively left him unable to find a job as a college football coach.

In November, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge decided to unseal documents that show an NCAA staff member and two non-voting members of the committee on infractions sought to influence voting members of the committee. Judge Frederick Shaller said the e-mails showed "ill will or hatred" toward McNair, according to a CBSSports.com report citing the judge's decision.

The NCAA is appealing the decision.

While Cohane's case isn't as well-known as McNair's, it stands to have a bigger impact. Cohane was forced to resign in 1999 after the NCAA, relying on an investigation by the school and the Mid-American Conference, found relatively minor charges — primarily watching recruits work out in a gym.

Cohane's suit alleges that seniors were told that their diplomas were in jeopardy unless they cooperated with the school and NCAA in implicating him. Since initially filing suit in 2004, Cohane has seen the case dismissed by a lower court before an appeals court overturned that decision three years later.

At issue is whether the NCAA can be considered a state actor, which would require it to provide due process under the 14th Amendment. Since the 1988 Supreme Court ruling in NCAA v. Tarkanian, courts have upheld that the NCAA is not a state actor. The appellate court decision in Cohane's case, which the NCAA tried to bring before the Supreme Court, says the district court was wrong to interpret the Tarkanian case as saying the NCAA can never be considered a state actor when it investigates a state school.

"He wants to ensure this doesn't happen again to other people," says Sean O'Leary, Cohane's attorney. "He would like to see the NCAA held accountable for destroying his coaching career. The reason why this case is so important is because the NCAA is incapable of fixing itself."

While not discussing the cases specifically, Remy and the association remain confident in their position in cases where the association has been sued as a result of the enforcement, infractions or eligibility processes.

"When those determinations in those types of cases don't go their way, they try to get redress in the courts," Remy says. "Oftentimes the courts will find that the NCAA's determinations have been, one, consistent with the constitution and bylaws, and two, not violative of any law or sufficient to justify any claim that somebody may have brought against us."

Remy says he intends to "vigorously defend" the NCAA in its pending lawsuits. There are not any attempts to settle any open cases, he said.

That's no different from the stance that led Tarkanian's case to the nation's highest court, where the NCAA's win has set precedent it has relied upon for the 25 years since then. Ten years after the case ended, Tarkanian settled a civil suit with the NCAA for $2.5 million. Vaccaro saw it as a bit of vindication for the coach who was one of the first to challenge the association.

"The public now knows what's happening," Vaccaro says. "They never knew before. They just assumed that Jerry must have done something."